1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to Internet search engines and more particularly to selecting Internet media channels based on augmented user preferences.
2. Related Art
The Internet has dramatically changed the manner in which we access, gather, and collect information. On-line users are able to access all types of information using the Internet, including various types of streaming media such as audio and video. For example, many hundreds or even thousands of radio stations now broadcast their programming over the Internet in addition to over the air.
Users can benefit from this great variety of programming, particularly if efficient tools are available for locating a station that suits the user's individual tastes. Various conventional Internet search engines can be used to search for Internet radio broadcasts, referred to herein as channels, based on one or more search terms in the same manner that one would search for other data items on the web. For example, a user can initiate a search based on an artist's name or a song title. If either of these search terms appear on a web page associated with a radio station's web site, this will result in a “hit”.
Conventional search engines do not provide a very robust search, particularly since search engines depend upon the existence of the requested data item on a web page. A user interested in finding stations that play a particular obscure artist may not receive hits for many of the stations that actually do play the artist, because the artist's name is not found on those stations' web pages. Also, the results of a conventional search engine search will not rank the search results according to the frequency with which the search terms are actually played by the radio station. Users may therefore find it difficult to find those radio stations that are best suited to their tastes.
What is needed is an improved system and method for selecting Internet media channels, and Internet radio stations in particular, based on user preferences.